Recently, Coolpad forayed in the upper mid-range smartphone market with the launch of its latest handset- Coolpad Max A8, which features a metal body, 2.5D curved-edge glass display and a decent spec sheet. But the highlight of the smartphone is its ‘dual-system’ security mode, which allows users to isolate their personal stuff from work and keep two distinct accounts for Facebook, WhatsApp and other social media applications.Is it enough to create ripples in the market or the company has made an early attempt in the upper mid range smartphone category with the Coolpad Max? Let’s find out.

DESIGN

Coolpad Max is indeed a step up in terms of design when compared with the previous affordable smartphones from the company. And that is quite understandable as it costs almost three times more than most of its Coolpad Note series smartphones.The smartphone comes with a full-metal unibody and feels quite robust and well constructed. The 2.5D curved glass at front adds to the premium design and comes with Gorilla Glass 4 protection. The rounded edges give the Coolpad Max an ergonomic structure, which otherwise feels a bit large to operate with one hand. The Xiaomi Mi 5, which is also priced at $380 is a better fit for one hand operation than the Coolpad Max, but that is also because the former features a smaller 5.15-inch display.The front has a 5MP shooter on top of the display along with an earpiece and a notification LED. The bottom has the microUSB slot (no Type C) and two speaker grilles, one of which is an actual speaker and the second is just for adding symmetry to the design. You will find the power button and SIM/microSD tray on the right side, which can accommodate one nano-SIM card and a second nano-SIM card or a microSD card. The volume buttons are on left side. The rear has fingerprint scanner with a nice shiny ring around it and a 13MP camera paired up with dual-tone LED flash.

DISPLAY

The 5.5-inch display did not disappoint us. It is fairly bright, feels vibrant and offers crisp content. The pixel density rests at 401ppi, which is good for watching videos and playing games, however we noticed reflections at the edges of the screen, which creates a problem if you are using the smartphone in direct sunlight.The display gets a 2.5D curved Gorilla Glass 4 protection.

HARDWARE

The Coolpad Max A8 has a 1.5 GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 CPU, 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage that can be expanded by up to 64GB via microSD card.As far as connectivity goes, Coolpad Max has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, A-GPS, FM radio, and USB OTG. There’s 64GB inbuilt memory with microSD support by up to 64GB. Coolpad Max misses on NFC and infrared, which are offered in some of the smartphones priced around $380.

PERFOMANCE

When it comes to computing power, the Snapdragon 617 SoC is not a match to the flagship Snapdragon 820 SoC. The smartphone suffers from frequent lags and hiccups and the day to day performance is just not as smooth as you would like.The keyboard lags a lot, and the RAM management is extremely poor. With just a few applications open, the available RAM drops to about 500 MB.

SOFTWARE

The Coolpad Max A8 runs Coolpad’s own Cool UI running on top of Android 5.1 Lollipop.Above and beyond the customization done by Coolpad on its UI, the company has adopted a Gold colour theme for the Coolpad Max. The Gold theme, supposedly done in a bid to look premium ends up looking extremely tacky and garish.The Coolpad Max also comes bundled with a fair amount of bloatware which bars the supposedly ‘premium’ experience.

CAMERA

The rear 13MP camera with a dual tone LED flash is rather mediocre, not befitting a Rs $380 smartphone. The images captured are not bad by any means, in fact they are crisp and vibrant, but they lack detailing and have a lot of noise.The front camera is decent for the occasional social media selfie, but not for much else.

BATTERY

Coolpad Max is backed by a non-removable 2,800mAh battery unit. It seems a bit underpowered but gets the support of Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0, which can quickly boost up the battery and works really well in real life. And that is something you actually need with the Coolpad Max as the 2,800mAh battery unit is not powerful enough to last for a day with moderate to heavy usage. You need a charger or a power bank handy with you if you are always hooked to your smartphone for browsing web pages, playing gaming, social networking and other everyday tasks.

CONCLUSION

The COOLPAD MAX A8is a very luxrious,and with very good specs mobile.the mobile at this moment is in at CAFAGO unique price for the $137.99 using coupon code: CLP809 (Aug. 9- Aug.25),since with these specs you want find easily something else.